"Tract" by Kevin Stein was probably my favorite poem in the book so far, but what struck me the most was the use of irony to convey the message.
Stein begins the poem with the "This poem's subject is the cantaloupe" and follows with a physical description of the cantaloupe in the ground. The description is lovely and poetic, but it is also one of the few moments in the poem in which the subject, i.e. the cantaloupe is ever explicitly described. Ironic, because cantaloupe is supposedly the subject of the poem.
For the majority of the poem Stein talks about how he is only going to talk about the cantaloupe and how he will not stray off topic from the cantaloupe. However, whenever he mentions an example of something that he is not going to do, he then goes on and does it.
Example:
"This poem won't employ simile to imply the process is like
a woman's ripening, when mind rushes its juices
through her body's flushed fruit..."
Stein's strategy of reiterating the subjectivity of the poem as the cantaloupe when he is clearly not talking about cantaloupe is ironic. I believe what Stein is really trying to say is that poetry is never subjective and to prove that he is showing us various poetic strategies. The subject of this poem, therefore, is not cantaloupe. What Stein is really trying to address is poetry in general, and by employing various devices Stein is saying that subjective poems are hardly ever really subjective.
So, by stating that his poem is about cantaloupe when it is clearly not about cantaloupe is ironic because the poem is about poetry and not about cantaloupe. And by dismissing the idea that the poem is about anything besides the cantaloupe and then going on to talk about subjects besides cantaloupe further emphasizes the irony, because the subject of the poem is not cantaloupe but by repeatedly stating that it is about cantaloupe just keeps proving that it's not about cantaloupe, it's about other things. Things that are not cantaloupe.
In case anyone was wondering, I used the word "cantaloupe" 20 times in this post.
Cantaloupe.
21.
Hi Dani,
ReplyDeleteYeah, you pointed this poem out to me in class the other day and I agree that it is thick with irony. It is almost a metapoem. In that it is talking about poetry through poetry. He takes a cantelope and uses this subject to dissect what poetry is about. In turning the poem on its head in essence. It is about a cantelope while at the same poem being about everything except a cantelope.